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Sun columnist Barbara Yaffe

Photograph by: Handout
, Vancouver Sun

If Enbridge has not yet got the message, it needs to be told: Its proposal to build the Northern Gateway pipeline through B.C. is dead.

The company, in the best interests of its shareholders, should withdraw its proposal and go back to the drawing board.

That, thanks to a four-page preliminary report released Tuesday by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board into Enbridge’s record in dealing with a nasty oil spill in Michigan’s Kalamazoo River two summers back.

The report has done what B.C. environmentalists and aboriginals could not — convince even the most disinterested British Columbian that an Enbridge pipeline through B.C’s midsection is too risky.

The Northern Gateway pipeline proposal at the moment is under review by federal regulators who are to report next year.

But this formal review was never going to be as important as a review that for the past year or so has been taking place in living rooms throughout the province.

British Columbians have been weighing in their minds whether the jobs, industrial spinoffs and government revenues to flow from the $5.5-billion megaproject are worth it.

Environmental concerns loom large in a green-minded province like B.C., where tourism and the fishery are economic drivers.

Taxpayers are also aware of how costly likely court battles with aboriginal groups opposed to the project could be.

Bob Rae’s Liberals sensibly are arguing for an alternative plan, pointing to a recent application by Kinder Morgan to expand its existing pipeline capacity through B.C. The Kinder Morgan pipeline carries oil to a Burnaby refinery and oil tankers using the Port of Vancouver.

Another alternative would be rail transport of petroleum products through the province.

But as for Northern Gateway, it’s dead.

Here are some key points made in the safety board report into the spill that dumped 120 tanker trucks worth of black sludge into the Michigan wetlands and waterways, with 320 people reporting harm to their health from benzene exposure.

• Enbridge “employees performed like Keystone Kops” in addressing the spill, demonstrating “a culture of deviance,” whereby staff felt they could freely ignore company procedures and protocols.

• So lame was Enbridge’s response plan that staff allowed the spill to continue unabated for 17 hours, through three employee shifts. This, despite multiple alarms and a loss of pressure in the pipeline.

• Staff attempted two start-ups of the line after the oil spill had begun, pumping in yet more oil. This, of course, resulted in greater spill damage.

• The cause of the pipeline’s rupture was identified as corrosion. The company had detected the relevant pipeline cracks back in 2005, but never repaired them.

The safety board’s full report is due out in “several weeks”.

Between now and then Enbridge doubtless will be strategizing, plotting a comprehensive public relations posture for British Columbians who, quite legitimately, will view the Kalamazoo spill, and response, as a canary in the mine shaft.

The company took an initial stab at defending itself immediately following release of the damning report, stating the Michigan personnel addressing the spill “were trying to do the right thing.”

Further, “our intent from the beginning of this incident has been to learn from it so we can prevent it from happening again.”

The big problem for Enbridge is that British Columbians, too, will be taking a lesson from this spill, so they can prevent it from happening again — in B.C.